Just finished my first playthrough with Elf on normal on Saturday after hitting the level cap for normal. Now working my way through on hard. This is probably my favorite (non-Sony published) PS3 game since Valkyria Chronicles!

The difficult part right now is to figure out if you want to go through the final challenges again against altered, harder enemy layouts with the same character, or start from scratch with a new class from the beginning.

I'd recommend new characters. I pushed ahead with my original and it burned me out hard. I'm level 77 or so and at the last dragon again but not sure I can take it out. Item drops are almost insignificantly different, ie what I already equipped is just as good and it takes many repetitive dungeon crawls to level up. The labyrinth changed things up a bit but not enough.

We need DLC maps and quests. Not sure I care about level cap increase or not.

Yep, not only is Cross Play coming (PS3 and Vita co-op), but the new patch will add/fix other stuff too (already out in Japan):

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- Improved the operational stability under specific circumstances.
- PlayStation 3 users and PS Vita users can enjoy co-op and competitive play together via Cross-Play.
- As not to throw them away by mistake, you can protect your items with an on / off switch.
- In the “Game Settings 2″ screen, you can set NPCs to join or not join.
- Each class’ skill effects and behavior have been adjusted.
- NPC behavior has been adjusted.
- The matching conditions for the Labyrinth of Chaos have been alleviated. You can now connect regardless of round number.
- Operability improvements and feature comforting
- Improvements to operability and functionality, etc.

Sounds good. I hope the A.I. improvements address how dumb NPCs are in boss fights. It's the main reason I never use them.

Heh, I was just about to post. I'm excited that new characters can be started that can immediately skip the story mode and get right to the talisman hunt.

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It’s been a while since Dragon’s Crown launched, but we haven’t stopped working to make it better. We added cross play, improved the game balance, and tweaked many things to make the game even more fun. You would think we were done by now, but today we have a true holiday miracle for you: another brand new feature. So knock the cobwebs off your Fighters, Elves, Wizards, and the rest, because we’re adding in a lot of new content with The Fifth Dragon’s Crown Patch.

If you’ve ever played a Vanillaware game before (Odin Sphere and Muramasa: Rebirth spring to mind), you know the brutal difficulty the games are known for. We got the impression that a lot of people didn’t feel Dragon’s Crown was hard enough on the way to level 99, so now there’s a brand new Ultimate difficulty level. After you clear the ninth layer of the Labyrinth of Chaos, you can access the new difficulty in the Temple.

So what’s it do? Well, it makes things harder, for one. But harder monsters mean players need to be better, stronger, and faster, so we’re raising the level cap from 99 to 255. You read that right, you now have 156 levels to grind out.

“But that’s a lot of grinding the same levels over and over again,” you’ll say. Well, we have you covered there, too! Once you’re on Ultimate difficulty, there will be a new dungeon unlocked, called the Tower of Mirages. It’s randomly generated and it has tens of thousands of levels. TENS. OF. THOUSANDS. I say this with all sincerity, since I know some of you are going to try to KO it: “Good luck.”

Finding it hard to give up your maxed-out Dwarf to start a new character? We fixed that too (sort of). As long as you have a save file with the Story mode cleared, you can make a new character that skips over that part and leads straight into the Talisman collection quest. Now there are no excuses for not making alts!

In addition to all that, we threw in a few other improvements for gameplay stability and various other tweaks to controls, NPCs, and character skills.

So go forth this holiday season and enjoy all the new stuff from Dragon’s Crown!